I'm not sure how I felt about Chocolat. It was a French film, that's for sure. From the long shot of the ocean starting things off, to the artistic shot of smoking a cigarette in silence while staring directly at the camera, this was textbook French film. I am personally a fan of some foreign cinema, though I'm no expert on them. The French style is cool and experiential, but it can also be pretty jarring to an American audience accustomed to a particular type of pacing and story structure.
For instance, during the first half of the movie, I was certain that the movie was going to escalate until Protee killed France's parents. There was even a hint of talking about another family who had had just that happen to them. Protee was a likable character and I wanted to see Aimee get her comeuppance. I thought at the beginning that there were a few subtle hints of Aimee's sexual attraction to Protee, but as she became more and more an unbearable character that seemed to dissipate until the conclusion.
I felt that the focal points of the movie were just a little off somehow. Luc and Protee's fight beared some resemblance to a climax, but didn't seem quite right. The strangers' appearance from the plane also muddled things for me personally. It was hard to keep track of all the new characters who were dropped on us at once. The true climax, the burning pipe scene was odd. It obviously had huge significance, just like the horizon metaphor, but without moving through layers of interpretation, the audience is lost as to what exactly Chocolat means.
Whereas I found the movie enjoyable yet confusing, the soundtrack is a whole other story. I have a bit of a fascination (or fixation, addiction, obsession, what have you) with "world music" (a vague term, but it's the best I've got. I'd say African in particular, but South American and Japanese and others also have my attention). Particularly the tracks that took place during the adult France scenes were brilliant. I spent quite a while searching out a place online to listen to them again. Both the funk burner in "African Market" and the concluding song "Pule (Rain)" just absorbed me. Abdullah Ibrahim did an excellent job on the soundtrack (released as the album Mindif) and I look forward to seeking out more of his compositions.
4/18
I'm excited about the upcoming project. I haven't written out the rationales yet, but I believe my project itself is finished. I decided to take the creative project option again, but this time I wrote a song instead of a poem. The three pieces I'm synthesizing are "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot, "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman, and "Faust" by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. All of the works deal in some way with the ideas of age, alienation, literature, and others. Eliot's piece is serving as a lynchpin for the song. "In the Room Women Come and Go/ Talking of Michaelangelo" works nicely as a chorus because of the rhyme. A refrain in the bridge also quotes directly from Prufrock. However, while Prufrock is only directly quoted, Faust and Song of Myself aren't used with quotes in the song.
I suppose I should start from the beginning: The song's going to be called "I guess I've been reading too much" (a subtle nod to singersongwriter's Nick Drake's "I guess I've been smoking too much"). I already have a literary tune about cliches and thought that making a song for this project might work well as a B-Side - however, I'm satisfied with this piece enough that I think it'll be the single I launch a solo project with. Each of the two verses deal exclusively with either Goethe or Whitman. I evoke themes of relating to these pieces of literature: the thirst and quest for knowledge that ends in dissatisfaction, with trying to dig into the "multitudes" and determine what is wisdom and what is vanity. All of them become tied together inside the chorus, with Prufrock as a catalyst, in which I write "In The Room Women Come and Go/ Talking of Michaelangelo - Oh God created Adam/ but it'd take a Mephistopheles/ To Make a man out of me". All in all, I'm excited to perform the piece and to write out the rationale and fully articulate my thinking on the piece's meaning.
Blake, this is a great idea. I don't have any advice. I'm sure it will be great. Can't wait for the performance at the exam. -MH
4/11
This week was very enjoyable for me. I don't have a particular focus or area of study since I'm not in graduate school yet, but the closest thing I have to one is The Lost Generation and Parisian avant-garde. Ever since I was exposed to the artistic and literary movements of Modernism, I've been hooked. I much enjoyed Monday's presentation on Modernist art, though I think that throughout the presentation modernism and modern became somewhat conflated. There were also some important elements regarding the interconnectedness of these genres. For instance, Dadaism itself as well as its strong connection with the emergence of surrealism were left out. I feel that if we had not merely learned about "Nude Descending a Stair" in isolation, but had discussed figures such as Marcel Duchamp, Tristan Tzara, Man Ray, etc then we could have had a better idea of the mission behind these various artistic forms. I feel that narrative often helps relate these things and biography can really emphasize the context of it all.
I had a blast giving our presentation, because it's just nice to ramble about your favorite thing to a group of people who are forced to listen to you. I wish we had had more time (a semester, perhaps) to look at these writers really in depth. "Prufrock" is certainly a hallmark of the genre, but in my fantasy world all of my classmates immediately went out and purchased copies of Winesburg, Ohio and Tender Buttons and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The literature all just really appeals to me, and perhaps just as much so, I feel that all of the Lost Generation writers are Romantic figures - above the normal reaches of people. And we have plenty of first-hand, biographical accounts to capture the amazing feats of these writers. A lot of my peers may have been bored to tears in high school by The Old Man and the Sea and I'm mortified that there are teachers out there who aren't stressing the fact that Ernest Hemingway used to go fishing for sharks with a machine-gun. Tell that to any adolescent boy and you might just turn them into a diehard fan of literature.
It was a wonderful opportunity to meet the artist today at the museum. I was amazed at her skill of crafting such small insects from glass. I felt, though, as I often do with visual art, that I just "didn't get it". I also felt that it was out-of-context from the other art we've been discussing (then again, it's near a century removed). I appreciated her craftsmanship, but wish that I could more directly understand her artistic message. Nonetheless, I'm thankful for the opportunity, it was an intriguing change of pace.
3/28
I'm surprised no one chose to present on Freud, I would have suspected him as a more popular choice than Heart of Darkness. Freud has grown much more interesting to me in these latest readings. Previously, I'd only heard his work second hand. In literature classrooms we often visit him in conjunction with Oedipus Rex, but rarely do we read his written work. We focus mainly on his theories, but hearing them only secondhand. Professors I've had have insisted that, though many of his theories have been disproven, it's still beneficial to consider them in relation to contemporaneous fiction, as the authors themselves had studied Freud. I remember in high school during my Lost Generation Literature class, our copies of of Winesburg, Ohio had all of the phallic and yonic symbols underlined: the remnants of a Critical Approaches to Literature course.
Of course, many scholars tend to just write off most of Freud's work since much of it has been disproven. That's probably the reason that until now I hadn't read his actual work. I was majorly surprised by just how good a writer Freud was. I can definitely understand how he developed such a huge following. It doesn't read as dull scientific text, but it's human and genuine. His use of the case study, while not up to par with modern scientific method, makes a much more personable read. I'd say certainly more attention-capturing than the likes of Marx or Darwin. And though Freud can come off as vain and misguided in a modern light, really we have much to be thankful for. If not for the development of psychoanalysis we'd still be cutting into people's nervous systems and taking looks around. His discoveries led to greater discoveries, just as any great scientific pioneer. Just as we wouldn't have chemistry without alchemy. Moreover, parts of Freudian thought are still relevant, such as the ideas of defense mechanisms.
3/21
This is a good week in Honors 203, because there's always plenty of conversation to have when the topic of study is one of your least favorite things. In this case - imperialism. Part of me sincerely hopes that most peoples' least favorite thing is imperialism, but judging by the state of the world, I think a lot of people genuinely enjoy imperialism. Going back to the root of the issue is strange. Approaching a novel like The Heart of Darkness, a classic in protest of the system of imperialism, you expect to have an enlightened perspective compared to the cultural norms of the time.
We read plenty of slave narratives early in the semester in which the oppressed people were represented as heroes rising above their social condition. They were transformed from a cultural norm as lesser beings into real human characters. These slave narratives acted as a means of expressing these stories to a reading public who had not considered such issues as slavery as basic moral transgressions.
The Heart of Darkness is much the opposite. It’s an anti-imperialism novel not for the sake of proving its moral high ground. It roots its philosophies in sheer pessimism. Like Chinua Achebe suggests, it does not personify the oppressed African. Rather it says we should just give up on imperialism because Africans are so savage that they could never be tamed or civilized. I have yet to see any merits of Conrad, and my contemporary sensibility is battered by Marlow’s views.
This view of the novel makes me feel betrayed. I’ve waited so long until I’ve read it, and I’ve been excited for the book up until now due to the allusions to it in The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot. I can see many of the stirrings of modernism starting to pop up in The Heart of Darkness, but it just doesn’t grab me like the writers of the 1920s. The techniques have a way to go before they’re mastered.
3/7
It was interesting to revisit The Yellow Wallpaper four years after my initial study of it. Back then I'd thought it was an interesting story, but I lacked the historical context of feminism at the time. Years ago, I read The Yellow Wallpaper as a tale of emerging insanity. The narrator was unreliable, locked away for her growing mental turmoil. I had interpreted the story as someone succumbing to madness through sheer bad luck genetically. She was separated from others for the severity of her deteriorating condition. Between then and now I saw a brilliant play in the black box theater at the Muncie Civic called In The Next Room (or The Vibrator Play). The piece follows the invention of the vibrator and its intended use as a treatment for hysteria. Though an unconventional topic, though in a small theater in a small town, In The Next Room was probably my favorite piece of drama I've ever seen (blowing some Broadway shows out of the water). It opened me up to an entire history of women's suffering and suffrage, and made feminism into a deeply held belief rather than a cursory interest. Now reading The Yellow Wallpaper, I see the terrible, oppressed conditions of women's lives forcing them into such emotional dismay as the narrator.
The Biblical women's pieces were interesting. Not being the most religious person, I always think it's fun to play with Biblical interpretations. Even without believing the Biblical creation, the reinterpretation of God as both masculine and feminine, the piece turns centuries of religious oppression against women on its head. And I'm a fan of anything that turns systematic oppression on its head. However, this particular feminism-focused interpretation doesn't rank high among my favorite genesis interpretations. The one we read for class still uses a starting point of Biblical validity and works within the framework of religion. One that I think more radically dissect the doctrine are Phillip Pullman's detailed in The Golden Compass which reinterprets the eating of the apple as Adam and Eve growing into sexual maturity. Another that I find really fascinating is the viewpoint of the Illuminati (the historical Illuminati, that is, not the New World Order lizard people). The Illuminati depicted Lucifer as the Morning Star or Lightbearer, who shared the gifts of knowledge, rationality, and intellectuality with humanity. I find this view more powerful than The Woman's Bible, because it doesn't just deal with the oppression of women, but the oppression of all people, united in a struggle for autonomy. It's somewhat like Audre Lorde's conception of feminism that calls for a unified struggle for equality, rather than carving out a separate offensive just for women or just for minorities or just for poor classes. The best revolution is one in which the contenders are unified in their adversity.
2/28
I have wanted to read A Doll's House for years. I remember in high school my roommate was reading it for a class and just raved about the play, and that struck a note of instant curiosity for me. The syllabus for 203 is such that I joke with my friends that the course should be named "Books that Blake has been wanting to read for a long time but hasn't gotten around to". I was thankful to finally get to read Ibsen's influential work. The play certainly didn't disappoint. For an nineteenth century work, its depiction of feminism was brilliant. In fact, for a work in any century it was brilliant, despite feminism not being Ibsen's intention. A Doll's House was representative of many social issues of the time. Surely, Nora's resolution was important to the play, but Torvald, Krogstad, and Dr. Rank all showed accurate portrayal's of men's thinking of the time. Nora made her choice within the play, the choice of independence, the play itself did not declare her viewpoint to be the correct one. Rather, the audience is invited to take in all the issues of the play and decide for themselves where they stand.
While my high school friends loved A Doll's House for its feminism, I recognized much more in the text. The idea of Bourgeois materialism manifests itself in a much clearer way than something than the Charles Dickens satire we read. In a way, the issue is even more clear than in Marx's work. Whereas Marx writes a declaration against the societal ills of his time, A Doll's House, in its rugged realism, perhaps sends a stronger message than a manifesto. A manifesto is a loud work, and while some may be inspired by it, others may feel confronted and thus be naturally set against those views. However, if you're just shown a slice of real life, uncut and true, you're more likely to make the same observations that would lead to a mindset against the Bourgeois material ideal. The difference is akin to the popular creative writing adage of "show don't tell". Whereas the manifesto tells you what to believe, A Doll's House simply shows you the bad and leads you to make your own conclusions.
2/21
It will be a challenge to make it through this weekly reflection without just devolving into the speech of a radical revolutionary. It’s just so hard to keep cool when thinking about the Bourgeois. How strange that in the face of such bountiful progress there were so many discontent with society. We had more products and wealth than ever, so much capital and so many things. Probably, the people upset were the ones without the things, which is understandable. It’s strange, given contemporary political spectrums, how divisive the line between the Bourgeois and the Working Class were in the 1800s. Of course, now the middle class is slowly slipping out of existence and the division is becoming greater than ever, so perhaps I’ll get to witness history first hand. We start calling the 99% and the 1% by their historical names, the Bourgeois and the Proletariat.
I can’t help but view the texts we’ve looked at through the lens of personal experience and other stories. I guess those schemas are the only ones I have, though. My background is pretty Bourgeois itself, my family made of small-business owners from a background of poverty and agriculture, but capitalists nonetheless. However, with the middle class evaporating, it looks like we’re being shoved off to the wrong side. I can definitely see, then, some problems with capitalism and the fact that over all the end goal of profit ends up hurting many, many people. I probably lean toward people like Karl Marx because I have always been told, since crib days, that sharing is good and that equality is good. Or maybe I just couldn’t stand to become a man like Ivan Ilyich. Content and good-natured are good things to be, but they can’t be everything a person is. I could never stand all of those business suit clones.
2/7
I enjoyed learning about Romantic music. Learning the context and meaning behind a lot of the styles really made it more understandable. It’s often difficult to ascertain the meaning of instrumental pieces. I would consider myself a bit of a music history buff, so long as we’re only counting post 1900 artists. However, classical music of all forms has been a strange block in my musical knowledge. I often find that I have trouble “getting into” the music. Perhaps it has to do with my bias toward the rhythmic forms of African descended music over the European tradition. Strangely, enough, the only other genre I’ve had such a block with is metal music. And while metal and classical music seem to be complete opposites, surprisingly, they’re some of the most similar styles out there. The timbre and orchestration is different, but as far as melody and rhythms, a lot of classical and metal can be considered identical. Though, I feel it’s strange that these are outside my realm of appreciation amid so many other diverse genres.
Whereas it may be my leaning toward rhythm, energy, and feeling that pulls me toward African music and away from European music, there’s another duality that may explain my taste. The few classical compositions I do really enjoy are Modernist composers, Erik Satie and George Antheil for interest. This could have to do with my leaning toward Modernism over Romanticism or Victorian styles of art, literature, and music. The exaggerated emotion and connections with nature are features that by now have become clichés. It’s difficult to go back to reading when these were original and new ideas. I feel that it’s much harder to look at it through fresh eyes, while the modern poets who have informed by conception of poetry have participated in a wholesale rejection of these literary ideas.
1/31
Mephistopheles has really jumped out at me as a character. I love an interesting villain, and adore the trickster archetype. Creating a devil figure with more dimensions than just being evil is a praiseworthy task. I talked a lot in class about his sense of humor and was pressed to find examples of jokes he makes – now with time to look at the text, I’ve located a prime example. During Faust and Mephistopheles’ ascent to the mountaintop on Walpurgis Night, Mephistopheles opens the scene saying “Now don’t you long for broomstick-transportation?” It is clear to me that this is the eighteenth century equivalent of the “Are we there yet” gag, still famously used in comedies today. I don’t know if this is the origin of the joke. I’m fairly certain it’s not given that people have been travelling long distances for a very long time, but I don’t see myself with free time to pore over classic literature looking for recurring jokes (self-note: Honors thesis?).
For some reason I just find it fascinating that the devil himself would be written more like a Dromio from the Comedy of Errors than as an unstoppable force of evil. Mephistopheles did remind me of one devil’s portrayal in particular, though. It is a little known fact that singer Sammy Davis Jr. spent a brief period in the 1970s as a Satanist. In this time, he produced an unaired pilot for a sitcom of his own design titled Poor Devil. The whole thing is on Youtube these days, but it’s just surreal. Poor Devil is a workplace comedy, but the workplace is hell, and Sammy is an agent of Lucifer forever resigned to shoveling coal and desperate for a shot at working the field, signing souls over to the devil. A young Christopher Lee plays Lucifer and the villain of the story is a young Adam West. What surprised me about Poor Devil when I read Faust, was that Poor Devil actually takes the details of the deal and Sammy’s demeanor straight from Mephistopheles in amazing detail. At one point Faust even called Mephistopheles a “Poor Devil”.
A difficulty in reading Faust was noting how the conventions of writing have changed since Goethe’s time. There are characters who pop up with no exposition or background. There is an incomprehensible several month time gap which we know little about. There are many implied deaths and births that we hear about in little detail. There is melodrama and philosophy just shouting at the reader rather than hidden behind subtext, imagery, and metaphor. They are features of the genre, but I wonder how much of it jars a modern audience from grappling with the issues inherent in the piece? I wonder about how one might update the language to make a modern interpretation with the same impact and thinking, but with realistic speech and action. There are numerous interpretations of the Faustian bargain in films every year, but I don’t know that any of them are considered definitive and true.
1/24
Faust is a piece I’ve wanted to read for a long time – ever since my high school theater director told me he played the character once. Definitely a feat with his wealth of dialogue. I would very much like to see an English performance of it. From an English education standpoint, I always feel as though students are put off by a lot of the old dramatists and poets, Shakespeare and Sophocles for instance. The old tongues can be very difficult to read, but work much better when the lines are spoken by an actor who understands them. I’m glad that we considered those issues in class, though the productions we glimpsed certainly made some different choices than I would have. For instance, I’ve never pictured the devil as a mime.
I’m also very interested in Goethe’s source material. I’ve read Christopher Marlowe’s pastoral poetry, but I wonder what his take on the Faust myth was like. Then, further, did Goethe take his inspiration from Marlowe’s edition, or did he use the conventions of the older German folktale. His being German taken into consideration, I would imagine there is a breadth of difference between the versions that go farther than just the opening dialogue between Mephistopheles and the Lord. Then there’s the fact that Dr. Faust is based loosely on the real life figure of Simon Magus.
I’m also sort of confused about the distinction between the usage of Faust and Faustus – are they interchangeable, or is there a convention to distinguish when to use either name?
Another part that jumped out to me was Faust evoking earth-based religions, Gaia figures, as well as his attempt to sudden alchemic elementals such as the Salamander, Sylph, and Udine. He eventually settled on using the crucifix in attempt to ward off Mephistopheles, but Faust seems to be a devout Christian (at least to start off), and Christian doctrine does not treat magic, sorcery, or divination lightly. Was there a different social rule of acceptance in Goethe’s time?
A final passing thought – as Mephistopheles follows Faust and Wagner in the form of a poodle, Faust is strongly affected by the omen and wants to avoid the animal. He even sees flames at its feet. However, Wagner reassures him that it is just an ordinary dog, and urges him to invite Mephistopheles in. So, isn’t the tragedy to come, then, at the fault of Wagner’s decision and not Faust’s?
1/17
The contrast in the readings this week has really pointed to flaws within conceptions of freedom. As understood in the American ethos, freedom is vague and abstract. Freedom is a principle, first believed and having action derived from it. However, when a person says that they believe in freedom, which freedom do they mean? Freedom from bondage? Freedom from sexual oppression? Freedom from society? The kind of freedom that people crave is from whatever demons haunt them.
Often, no matter what one has, they still strive toward this ideal. The slave stripped of agency wants simply to roam at his leisure. They want to have what is deprived to them to be placed into a realm above what is their normalcy. However, the wandering poet who has seen all the continent has to offer, who has seen men in every form, has given up on them entirely. Even in his station relative to the slave, he has judged all to be seen as less than his worth.
Dostoevsky has a strangely different sort of freedom as the theme of The Grand Inquisitor. Now we are treated not to the viewpoint of the slave or the jilted, but to the perspective of the master. He has paid the cost of his own salvation in order to enslave the world – to their benefit. Douglass would not have been so patient as the Inquisitor’s audience. However, their conceptions of freedom, and the lack of it, are so different. The freedom discussed in The Brothers Karamazov is not freedom from something. Their freedom is perhaps the most basic, generalized freedom of all – for while Whitman, Douglass, and Jacobs all express their desire and image of a better life – one with freedom, Christ speaks not a word on behalf of the freedom he afforded the earth. Who will defend this freedom from the Grand Inquisitor?
1/10
Hey everyone, it’s nice to meet you all and I look forward to the course. I’ll get started with a little bit about myself. My name is Blake Mellencamp. I plan on going into secondary English teaching. Currently I work both at the Indiana Academy and at Village Green Records. I lead the Writers Community here at Ball State, so everyone interested in creative writing should feel free to join us in RB 297 Wednesday evenings at 8 PM. I’m also involved in the Glue & Scissors Society, an organization promoting the arts in the Muncie community. I hope that you’ll come by the village some weekend and join us at one of our many events. Perhaps you’ll even catch me performing at Be Here Now in the local band Radio Cologne. Now that every organization I’m involved with has been thoroughly plugged, let’s get on to Frederick Douglass.
Douglass was a prime figure of the abolitionist movement. While we often idolize figures such as Abraham Lincoln for the Emancipation Proclamation or Levi Coffin for his involvement in the Underground Railroad, none of these men had been affected as Douglass was. Just looking at the photographs of Douglass, one can see that he was a force to be reckoned with. His gaze penetrates two hundred years. Many of us have heard of his work, but this was my first time encountering his testimony of life in slavery. Whereas it took the partnership of men like Lincoln and Coffin to reach the goals of abolishment, we often overlook the true suffering of those like Jacobs or Douglass. Their hearts drove the struggle for equality.
This observation may be obvious, but I feel it still deserves recognition, as it applies to modern struggles. For instance, I read in an article recently about the popular musician Macklemore being embraced for his lyrics’ open support of gay rights. However, the criticism was that while we take this straight, white man’s testimony to heart, many testimonies of genuine suffering by those in the minority culture have been swept under the rug.
I want to research the “Sorrow Songs”, as Du Bois called them, referenced in the reading. I’ve long been a fan of the early Delta Blues, but surely there are some good recordings made later on of the spirituals originally performed by groups such as the Fisk Jubilee Singers.
P.S. Freedom
Thinking in the line of the sorrow songs, I find it strange that bondage is what inspired these revered pieces of our musical history. It rings true of Maya Angelou's knowing why the caged bird sings. What part does the deep seated emotion of cultures play in the composition of their music.
Also strange is modern America's preoccupation with an abstract notion of freedom. It's as though many people have forgotten or choose to ignore that so much of American history has been predicated on bondage.
4/25
I'm not sure how I felt about Chocolat. It was a French film, that's for sure. From the long shot of the ocean starting things off, to the artistic shot of smoking a cigarette in silence while staring directly at the camera, this was textbook French film. I am personally a fan of some foreign cinema, though I'm no expert on them. The French style is cool and experiential, but it can also be pretty jarring to an American audience accustomed to a particular type of pacing and story structure.
For instance, during the first half of the movie, I was certain that the movie was going to escalate until Protee killed France's parents. There was even a hint of talking about another family who had had just that happen to them. Protee was a likable character and I wanted to see Aimee get her comeuppance. I thought at the beginning that there were a few subtle hints of Aimee's sexual attraction to Protee, but as she became more and more an unbearable character that seemed to dissipate until the conclusion.
I felt that the focal points of the movie were just a little off somehow. Luc and Protee's fight beared some resemblance to a climax, but didn't seem quite right. The strangers' appearance from the plane also muddled things for me personally. It was hard to keep track of all the new characters who were dropped on us at once. The true climax, the burning pipe scene was odd. It obviously had huge significance, just like the horizon metaphor, but without moving through layers of interpretation, the audience is lost as to what exactly Chocolat means.
Whereas I found the movie enjoyable yet confusing, the soundtrack is a whole other story. I have a bit of a fascination (or fixation, addiction, obsession, what have you) with "world music" (a vague term, but it's the best I've got. I'd say African in particular, but South American and Japanese and others also have my attention). Particularly the tracks that took place during the adult France scenes were brilliant. I spent quite a while searching out a place online to listen to them again. Both the funk burner in "African Market" and the concluding song "Pule (Rain)" just absorbed me. Abdullah Ibrahim did an excellent job on the soundtrack (released as the album Mindif) and I look forward to seeking out more of his compositions.
4/18
I'm excited about the upcoming project. I haven't written out the rationales yet, but I believe my project itself is finished. I decided to take the creative project option again, but this time I wrote a song instead of a poem. The three pieces I'm synthesizing are "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot, "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman, and "Faust" by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. All of the works deal in some way with the ideas of age, alienation, literature, and others. Eliot's piece is serving as a lynchpin for the song. "In the Room Women Come and Go/ Talking of Michaelangelo" works nicely as a chorus because of the rhyme. A refrain in the bridge also quotes directly from Prufrock. However, while Prufrock is only directly quoted, Faust and Song of Myself aren't used with quotes in the song.
I suppose I should start from the beginning: The song's going to be called "I guess I've been reading too much" (a subtle nod to singersongwriter's Nick Drake's "I guess I've been smoking too much"). I already have a literary tune about cliches and thought that making a song for this project might work well as a B-Side - however, I'm satisfied with this piece enough that I think it'll be the single I launch a solo project with. Each of the two verses deal exclusively with either Goethe or Whitman. I evoke themes of relating to these pieces of literature: the thirst and quest for knowledge that ends in dissatisfaction, with trying to dig into the "multitudes" and determine what is wisdom and what is vanity. All of them become tied together inside the chorus, with Prufrock as a catalyst, in which I write "In The Room Women Come and Go/ Talking of Michaelangelo - Oh God created Adam/ but it'd take a Mephistopheles/ To Make a man out of me". All in all, I'm excited to perform the piece and to write out the rationale and fully articulate my thinking on the piece's meaning.
Blake, this is a great idea. I don't have any advice. I'm sure it will be great. Can't wait for the performance at the exam. -MH
4/11
This week was very enjoyable for me. I don't have a particular focus or area of study since I'm not in graduate school yet, but the closest thing I have to one is The Lost Generation and Parisian avant-garde. Ever since I was exposed to the artistic and literary movements of Modernism, I've been hooked. I much enjoyed Monday's presentation on Modernist art, though I think that throughout the presentation modernism and modern became somewhat conflated. There were also some important elements regarding the interconnectedness of these genres. For instance, Dadaism itself as well as its strong connection with the emergence of surrealism were left out. I feel that if we had not merely learned about "Nude Descending a Stair" in isolation, but had discussed figures such as Marcel Duchamp, Tristan Tzara, Man Ray, etc then we could have had a better idea of the mission behind these various artistic forms. I feel that narrative often helps relate these things and biography can really emphasize the context of it all.
I had a blast giving our presentation, because it's just nice to ramble about your favorite thing to a group of people who are forced to listen to you. I wish we had had more time (a semester, perhaps) to look at these writers really in depth. "Prufrock" is certainly a hallmark of the genre, but in my fantasy world all of my classmates immediately went out and purchased copies of Winesburg, Ohio and Tender Buttons and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The literature all just really appeals to me, and perhaps just as much so, I feel that all of the Lost Generation writers are Romantic figures - above the normal reaches of people. And we have plenty of first-hand, biographical accounts to capture the amazing feats of these writers. A lot of my peers may have been bored to tears in high school by The Old Man and the Sea and I'm mortified that there are teachers out there who aren't stressing the fact that Ernest Hemingway used to go fishing for sharks with a machine-gun. Tell that to any adolescent boy and you might just turn them into a diehard fan of literature.
It was a wonderful opportunity to meet the artist today at the museum. I was amazed at her skill of crafting such small insects from glass. I felt, though, as I often do with visual art, that I just "didn't get it". I also felt that it was out-of-context from the other art we've been discussing (then again, it's near a century removed). I appreciated her craftsmanship, but wish that I could more directly understand her artistic message. Nonetheless, I'm thankful for the opportunity, it was an intriguing change of pace.
3/28
I'm surprised no one chose to present on Freud, I would have suspected him as a more popular choice than Heart of Darkness. Freud has grown much more interesting to me in these latest readings. Previously, I'd only heard his work second hand. In literature classrooms we often visit him in conjunction with Oedipus Rex, but rarely do we read his written work. We focus mainly on his theories, but hearing them only secondhand. Professors I've had have insisted that, though many of his theories have been disproven, it's still beneficial to consider them in relation to contemporaneous fiction, as the authors themselves had studied Freud. I remember in high school during my Lost Generation Literature class, our copies of of Winesburg, Ohio had all of the phallic and yonic symbols underlined: the remnants of a Critical Approaches to Literature course.
Of course, many scholars tend to just write off most of Freud's work since much of it has been disproven. That's probably the reason that until now I hadn't read his actual work. I was majorly surprised by just how good a writer Freud was. I can definitely understand how he developed such a huge following. It doesn't read as dull scientific text, but it's human and genuine. His use of the case study, while not up to par with modern scientific method, makes a much more personable read. I'd say certainly more attention-capturing than the likes of Marx or Darwin. And though Freud can come off as vain and misguided in a modern light, really we have much to be thankful for. If not for the development of psychoanalysis we'd still be cutting into people's nervous systems and taking looks around. His discoveries led to greater discoveries, just as any great scientific pioneer. Just as we wouldn't have chemistry without alchemy. Moreover, parts of Freudian thought are still relevant, such as the ideas of defense mechanisms.
3/21
This is a good week in Honors 203, because there's always plenty of conversation to have when the topic of study is one of your least favorite things. In this case - imperialism. Part of me sincerely hopes that most peoples' least favorite thing is imperialism, but judging by the state of the world, I think a lot of people genuinely enjoy imperialism. Going back to the root of the issue is strange. Approaching a novel like The Heart of Darkness, a classic in protest of the system of imperialism, you expect to have an enlightened perspective compared to the cultural norms of the time.
We read plenty of slave narratives early in the semester in which the oppressed people were represented as heroes rising above their social condition. They were transformed from a cultural norm as lesser beings into real human characters. These slave narratives acted as a means of expressing these stories to a reading public who had not considered such issues as slavery as basic moral transgressions.
The Heart of Darkness is much the opposite. It’s an anti-imperialism novel not for the sake of proving its moral high ground. It roots its philosophies in sheer pessimism. Like Chinua Achebe suggests, it does not personify the oppressed African. Rather it says we should just give up on imperialism because Africans are so savage that they could never be tamed or civilized. I have yet to see any merits of Conrad, and my contemporary sensibility is battered by Marlow’s views.
This view of the novel makes me feel betrayed. I’ve waited so long until I’ve read it, and I’ve been excited for the book up until now due to the allusions to it in The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot. I can see many of the stirrings of modernism starting to pop up in The Heart of Darkness, but it just doesn’t grab me like the writers of the 1920s. The techniques have a way to go before they’re mastered.
3/7
It was interesting to revisit The Yellow Wallpaper four years after my initial study of it. Back then I'd thought it was an interesting story, but I lacked the historical context of feminism at the time. Years ago, I read The Yellow Wallpaper as a tale of emerging insanity. The narrator was unreliable, locked away for her growing mental turmoil. I had interpreted the story as someone succumbing to madness through sheer bad luck genetically. She was separated from others for the severity of her deteriorating condition. Between then and now I saw a brilliant play in the black box theater at the Muncie Civic called In The Next Room (or The Vibrator Play). The piece follows the invention of the vibrator and its intended use as a treatment for hysteria. Though an unconventional topic, though in a small theater in a small town, In The Next Room was probably my favorite piece of drama I've ever seen (blowing some Broadway shows out of the water). It opened me up to an entire history of women's suffering and suffrage, and made feminism into a deeply held belief rather than a cursory interest. Now reading The Yellow Wallpaper, I see the terrible, oppressed conditions of women's lives forcing them into such emotional dismay as the narrator.
The Biblical women's pieces were interesting. Not being the most religious person, I always think it's fun to play with Biblical interpretations. Even without believing the Biblical creation, the reinterpretation of God as both masculine and feminine, the piece turns centuries of religious oppression against women on its head. And I'm a fan of anything that turns systematic oppression on its head. However, this particular feminism-focused interpretation doesn't rank high among my favorite genesis interpretations. The one we read for class still uses a starting point of Biblical validity and works within the framework of religion. One that I think more radically dissect the doctrine are Phillip Pullman's detailed in The Golden Compass which reinterprets the eating of the apple as Adam and Eve growing into sexual maturity. Another that I find really fascinating is the viewpoint of the Illuminati (the historical Illuminati, that is, not the New World Order lizard people). The Illuminati depicted Lucifer as the Morning Star or Lightbearer, who shared the gifts of knowledge, rationality, and intellectuality with humanity. I find this view more powerful than The Woman's Bible, because it doesn't just deal with the oppression of women, but the oppression of all people, united in a struggle for autonomy. It's somewhat like Audre Lorde's conception of feminism that calls for a unified struggle for equality, rather than carving out a separate offensive just for women or just for minorities or just for poor classes. The best revolution is one in which the contenders are unified in their adversity.
2/28
I have wanted to read A Doll's House for years. I remember in high school my roommate was reading it for a class and just raved about the play, and that struck a note of instant curiosity for me. The syllabus for 203 is such that I joke with my friends that the course should be named "Books that Blake has been wanting to read for a long time but hasn't gotten around to". I was thankful to finally get to read Ibsen's influential work. The play certainly didn't disappoint. For an nineteenth century work, its depiction of feminism was brilliant. In fact, for a work in any century it was brilliant, despite feminism not being Ibsen's intention. A Doll's House was representative of many social issues of the time. Surely, Nora's resolution was important to the play, but Torvald, Krogstad, and Dr. Rank all showed accurate portrayal's of men's thinking of the time. Nora made her choice within the play, the choice of independence, the play itself did not declare her viewpoint to be the correct one. Rather, the audience is invited to take in all the issues of the play and decide for themselves where they stand.
While my high school friends loved A Doll's House for its feminism, I recognized much more in the text. The idea of Bourgeois materialism manifests itself in a much clearer way than something than the Charles Dickens satire we read. In a way, the issue is even more clear than in Marx's work. Whereas Marx writes a declaration against the societal ills of his time, A Doll's House, in its rugged realism, perhaps sends a stronger message than a manifesto. A manifesto is a loud work, and while some may be inspired by it, others may feel confronted and thus be naturally set against those views. However, if you're just shown a slice of real life, uncut and true, you're more likely to make the same observations that would lead to a mindset against the Bourgeois material ideal. The difference is akin to the popular creative writing adage of "show don't tell". Whereas the manifesto tells you what to believe, A Doll's House simply shows you the bad and leads you to make your own conclusions.
2/21
It will be a challenge to make it through this weekly reflection without just devolving into the speech of a radical revolutionary. It’s just so hard to keep cool when thinking about the Bourgeois. How strange that in the face of such bountiful progress there were so many discontent with society. We had more products and wealth than ever, so much capital and so many things. Probably, the people upset were the ones without the things, which is understandable. It’s strange, given contemporary political spectrums, how divisive the line between the Bourgeois and the Working Class were in the 1800s. Of course, now the middle class is slowly slipping out of existence and the division is becoming greater than ever, so perhaps I’ll get to witness history first hand. We start calling the 99% and the 1% by their historical names, the Bourgeois and the Proletariat.
I can’t help but view the texts we’ve looked at through the lens of personal experience and other stories. I guess those schemas are the only ones I have, though. My background is pretty Bourgeois itself, my family made of small-business owners from a background of poverty and agriculture, but capitalists nonetheless. However, with the middle class evaporating, it looks like we’re being shoved off to the wrong side. I can definitely see, then, some problems with capitalism and the fact that over all the end goal of profit ends up hurting many, many people. I probably lean toward people like Karl Marx because I have always been told, since crib days, that sharing is good and that equality is good. Or maybe I just couldn’t stand to become a man like Ivan Ilyich. Content and good-natured are good things to be, but they can’t be everything a person is. I could never stand all of those business suit clones.
2/7
I enjoyed learning about Romantic music. Learning the context and meaning behind a lot of the styles really made it more understandable. It’s often difficult to ascertain the meaning of instrumental pieces. I would consider myself a bit of a music history buff, so long as we’re only counting post 1900 artists. However, classical music of all forms has been a strange block in my musical knowledge. I often find that I have trouble “getting into” the music. Perhaps it has to do with my bias toward the rhythmic forms of African descended music over the European tradition. Strangely, enough, the only other genre I’ve had such a block with is metal music. And while metal and classical music seem to be complete opposites, surprisingly, they’re some of the most similar styles out there. The timbre and orchestration is different, but as far as melody and rhythms, a lot of classical and metal can be considered identical. Though, I feel it’s strange that these are outside my realm of appreciation amid so many other diverse genres.
Whereas it may be my leaning toward rhythm, energy, and feeling that pulls me toward African music and away from European music, there’s another duality that may explain my taste. The few classical compositions I do really enjoy are Modernist composers, Erik Satie and George Antheil for interest. This could have to do with my leaning toward Modernism over Romanticism or Victorian styles of art, literature, and music. The exaggerated emotion and connections with nature are features that by now have become clichés. It’s difficult to go back to reading when these were original and new ideas. I feel that it’s much harder to look at it through fresh eyes, while the modern poets who have informed by conception of poetry have participated in a wholesale rejection of these literary ideas.
1/31
Mephistopheles has really jumped out at me as a character. I love an interesting villain, and adore the trickster archetype. Creating a devil figure with more dimensions than just being evil is a praiseworthy task. I talked a lot in class about his sense of humor and was pressed to find examples of jokes he makes – now with time to look at the text, I’ve located a prime example. During Faust and Mephistopheles’ ascent to the mountaintop on Walpurgis Night, Mephistopheles opens the scene saying “Now don’t you long for broomstick-transportation?” It is clear to me that this is the eighteenth century equivalent of the “Are we there yet” gag, still famously used in comedies today. I don’t know if this is the origin of the joke. I’m fairly certain it’s not given that people have been travelling long distances for a very long time, but I don’t see myself with free time to pore over classic literature looking for recurring jokes (self-note: Honors thesis?).
For some reason I just find it fascinating that the devil himself would be written more like a Dromio from the Comedy of Errors than as an unstoppable force of evil. Mephistopheles did remind me of one devil’s portrayal in particular, though. It is a little known fact that singer Sammy Davis Jr. spent a brief period in the 1970s as a Satanist. In this time, he produced an unaired pilot for a sitcom of his own design titled Poor Devil. The whole thing is on Youtube these days, but it’s just surreal. Poor Devil is a workplace comedy, but the workplace is hell, and Sammy is an agent of Lucifer forever resigned to shoveling coal and desperate for a shot at working the field, signing souls over to the devil. A young Christopher Lee plays Lucifer and the villain of the story is a young Adam West. What surprised me about Poor Devil when I read Faust, was that Poor Devil actually takes the details of the deal and Sammy’s demeanor straight from Mephistopheles in amazing detail. At one point Faust even called Mephistopheles a “Poor Devil”.
A difficulty in reading Faust was noting how the conventions of writing have changed since Goethe’s time. There are characters who pop up with no exposition or background. There is an incomprehensible several month time gap which we know little about. There are many implied deaths and births that we hear about in little detail. There is melodrama and philosophy just shouting at the reader rather than hidden behind subtext, imagery, and metaphor. They are features of the genre, but I wonder how much of it jars a modern audience from grappling with the issues inherent in the piece? I wonder about how one might update the language to make a modern interpretation with the same impact and thinking, but with realistic speech and action. There are numerous interpretations of the Faustian bargain in films every year, but I don’t know that any of them are considered definitive and true.
1/24
Faust is a piece I’ve wanted to read for a long time – ever since my high school theater director told me he played the character once. Definitely a feat with his wealth of dialogue. I would very much like to see an English performance of it. From an English education standpoint, I always feel as though students are put off by a lot of the old dramatists and poets, Shakespeare and Sophocles for instance. The old tongues can be very difficult to read, but work much better when the lines are spoken by an actor who understands them. I’m glad that we considered those issues in class, though the productions we glimpsed certainly made some different choices than I would have. For instance, I’ve never pictured the devil as a mime.
I’m also very interested in Goethe’s source material. I’ve read Christopher Marlowe’s pastoral poetry, but I wonder what his take on the Faust myth was like. Then, further, did Goethe take his inspiration from Marlowe’s edition, or did he use the conventions of the older German folktale. His being German taken into consideration, I would imagine there is a breadth of difference between the versions that go farther than just the opening dialogue between Mephistopheles and the Lord. Then there’s the fact that Dr. Faust is based loosely on the real life figure of Simon Magus.
I’m also sort of confused about the distinction between the usage of Faust and Faustus – are they interchangeable, or is there a convention to distinguish when to use either name?
Another part that jumped out to me was Faust evoking earth-based religions, Gaia figures, as well as his attempt to sudden alchemic elementals such as the Salamander, Sylph, and Udine. He eventually settled on using the crucifix in attempt to ward off Mephistopheles, but Faust seems to be a devout Christian (at least to start off), and Christian doctrine does not treat magic, sorcery, or divination lightly. Was there a different social rule of acceptance in Goethe’s time?
A final passing thought – as Mephistopheles follows Faust and Wagner in the form of a poodle, Faust is strongly affected by the omen and wants to avoid the animal. He even sees flames at its feet. However, Wagner reassures him that it is just an ordinary dog, and urges him to invite Mephistopheles in. So, isn’t the tragedy to come, then, at the fault of Wagner’s decision and not Faust’s?
1/17
The contrast in the readings this week has really pointed to flaws within conceptions of freedom. As understood in the American ethos, freedom is vague and abstract. Freedom is a principle, first believed and having action derived from it. However, when a person says that they believe in freedom, which freedom do they mean? Freedom from bondage? Freedom from sexual oppression? Freedom from society? The kind of freedom that people crave is from whatever demons haunt them.
Often, no matter what one has, they still strive toward this ideal. The slave stripped of agency wants simply to roam at his leisure. They want to have what is deprived to them to be placed into a realm above what is their normalcy. However, the wandering poet who has seen all the continent has to offer, who has seen men in every form, has given up on them entirely. Even in his station relative to the slave, he has judged all to be seen as less than his worth.
Dostoevsky has a strangely different sort of freedom as the theme of The Grand Inquisitor. Now we are treated not to the viewpoint of the slave or the jilted, but to the perspective of the master. He has paid the cost of his own salvation in order to enslave the world – to their benefit. Douglass would not have been so patient as the Inquisitor’s audience. However, their conceptions of freedom, and the lack of it, are so different. The freedom discussed in The Brothers Karamazov is not freedom from something. Their freedom is perhaps the most basic, generalized freedom of all – for while Whitman, Douglass, and Jacobs all express their desire and image of a better life – one with freedom, Christ speaks not a word on behalf of the freedom he afforded the earth. Who will defend this freedom from the Grand Inquisitor?
1/10
Hey everyone, it’s nice to meet you all and I look forward to the course. I’ll get started with a little bit about myself. My name is Blake Mellencamp. I plan on going into secondary English teaching. Currently I work both at the Indiana Academy and at Village Green Records. I lead the Writers Community here at Ball State, so everyone interested in creative writing should feel free to join us in RB 297 Wednesday evenings at 8 PM. I’m also involved in the Glue & Scissors Society, an organization promoting the arts in the Muncie community. I hope that you’ll come by the village some weekend and join us at one of our many events. Perhaps you’ll even catch me performing at Be Here Now in the local band Radio Cologne. Now that every organization I’m involved with has been thoroughly plugged, let’s get on to Frederick Douglass.
Douglass was a prime figure of the abolitionist movement. While we often idolize figures such as Abraham Lincoln for the Emancipation Proclamation or Levi Coffin for his involvement in the Underground Railroad, none of these men had been affected as Douglass was. Just looking at the photographs of Douglass, one can see that he was a force to be reckoned with. His gaze penetrates two hundred years. Many of us have heard of his work, but this was my first time encountering his testimony of life in slavery. Whereas it took the partnership of men like Lincoln and Coffin to reach the goals of abolishment, we often overlook the true suffering of those like Jacobs or Douglass. Their hearts drove the struggle for equality.
This observation may be obvious, but I feel it still deserves recognition, as it applies to modern struggles. For instance, I read in an article recently about the popular musician Macklemore being embraced for his lyrics’ open support of gay rights. However, the criticism was that while we take this straight, white man’s testimony to heart, many testimonies of genuine suffering by those in the minority culture have been swept under the rug.
I want to research the “Sorrow Songs”, as Du Bois called them, referenced in the reading. I’ve long been a fan of the early Delta Blues, but surely there are some good recordings made later on of the spirituals originally performed by groups such as the Fisk Jubilee Singers.
P.S. Freedom
Thinking in the line of the sorrow songs, I find it strange that bondage is what inspired these revered pieces of our musical history. It rings true of Maya Angelou's knowing why the caged bird sings. What part does the deep seated emotion of cultures play in the composition of their music.
Also strange is modern America's preoccupation with an abstract notion of freedom. It's as though many people have forgotten or choose to ignore that so much of American history has been predicated on bondage.